Career

I'm a robot and simulation engineer with broad expertise ranging from industrial machines to animatronic puppets to digital characters. For years, my focus was Character Robots, or robots with biological, special effect appearances, lifelike animations, and expressive personalities. These days I spend a lot of time in Virtual Reality, building their digital equivalents.

Since 2014, I have worked at R&D/Leverage as an automation engineer. I developed a real-time prototyping system called LE-VR and am augmenting our overall technology level.

In 2011, I worked full time at Weta Workshop to create animatronic creature props and effects for several feature films, including "The Hobbit". I did some work on set with my pieces and actors.

In February 2006, I founded Golem Group. I made several animatronic systems, incorporating work with robotic frames, pneumatic actuators, servomechanisms, sensors, custom PCB electronics, and control circuitry.

From January 2010 to August 2011, I was a researcher at the US Army Research Laboratory Robotics Program Office. I developed control software and electronics for a tentacle manipulator (robot hand made of multiple snake-like robots), acquired specialized training in embedded systems development, worked with robots the size of bugs, the size of cars, and many in-between, developed projects using the Robot Operating System, and performed research in the effect that robot movement has on a human observer.

From July 2005 to January 2010, I was a computer engineer for US Army CERDEC. I was on the C2ORE ATO Team, working in software development, testing, and demonstrations on a system to control multiple robotic entities simultaneously. Additionally, I worked as an ARL guest researcher in various robotics technologies under the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance.

Education

Columbia University - New York, NY - January 2006 to August 2009

- Computer Science (Robotics Track) Master of Science Degree

- Developed complete animatronic control system and prop for Master's Project